So until somebody ponies up the cash to conduct a proper survey or Apple stops being so secretive about it's business, this sort of thing is the best we will have. And even with selection bias, the results are likely better than a small collection of anecdotes.

One would say there are easier methods, that are more objective. Like: take the statistics provided by the app store on number of downloads, the price of the app (if not free), and from that you have the revenue.

It's normal that the top 20% takes 80% of sales. Like 20% of the products in a typical supermarket create 80% of turnover. Though in the app market it may be even more skewed.

It's normal that the top 20% takes 80% of sales. Like 20% of the products in a typical supermarket create 80% of turnover. Though in the app market it may be even more skewed.

I was thinking that too and wondering why this was a shock to anyone. Top 20% of smartphones probably make up 80% of sales, top 20% of OSes probably make 80% of sales, top $SmallNumber of $Anything probably make $LargeNumber of sales. That's just how it's going to be with everything in life, there will always be a few leaders that rise to the top while everyone else shares what the leaders can not accommodate. To the victor goes the spoils.

One would say there are easier methods, that are more objective. Like: take the statistics provided by the app store on number of downloads, the price of the app (if not free), and from that you have the revenue.

It's normal that the top 20% takes 80% of sales. Like 20% of the products in a typical supermarket create 80% of turnover. Though in the app market it may be even more skewed.

But that is where the stats would fail. Many of the free based games are ad-supported and make money off of that. You would not be capturing that large demographic.

One would say there are easier methods, that are more objective. Like: take the statistics provided by the app store on number of downloads, the price of the app (if not free), and from that you have the revenue.

The problem is that the app store does not provide any stats on the number of downloads. You can get a ranking, but that tells you nothing about download numbers. You can glean together bits of information from the occasional developer who says "my app that hit #4 had 15,000 downloads", but since no one (except Apple) knows exactly how the ranking algorithms work, even that's not accurate. Further, the number of downloads required to reach a given ranking changes daily based on the number of downloads on th

I'll assume you meant "home computer games" rather than PC games, since PCs were more used for business than games in the 80s.. so not exactly a fair comparison.

When you start to take into account late 80s and 90s home computer/console games, modern day phone gaming is blown away. In fact forget late 80s and 90s - I'd seriously rather play text-based adventures over the mobile games I've played so far. I was born in 1983 in case you're wondering.

80s/90s style point'n'click adventure games are perfect for touchscreen devices. They're one genre where tablets would have a chance to really shine. I see Tales Of Monkey Island was released for iOS, that's a start. Would have been nice if they released for Android too, though I already completed it on PS3.

Apparently the ScummVM was also ported, so there should be a nice bunch of games ready to be played. Beneath a Steel Sky should work nicely.

Beneath A Steel Skye was actually released as an app for the iPad (my flatmate has it). The rest will be available on ScummVM yes, but I think more developers should make new point'n'click style games for all these touchscreen devices. I found this [androidpimps.com] while Googling earlier. Flash does make sense for 2D point'n'click games, though I'd imagine ScummVM makes things even easier since it's specifically designed for them.

I'm quite aware that all home computers, phones, graphic calculators, etc could be referred to as "personal computers", and I know that makes sense, but it's simply not common usage. PC has meant "IBM PC compatible/derivative" for a long time. Witness the "I'm a Mac / and I'm a PC" adverts. Even in my Mac and Amiga days, I didn't refer to them as PCs. I referred to them as Macs and Amigas, or computers.

I play PC games. Give me a call when you make a decent one. That is what phones are for.

I play Angry Birds and the other 1% top games on my iPhone and just finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution on max difficulty on my PC, I don't see the big contradiction in that. The games on my phone are to pass time, I'm not expecting a huge game experience for $1 and I don't think the small screen and touch interfaces could provide one either. It's just there in my pocket every time I got 5 minutes to waste and I just grab something from the top 25 - sometimes top 100 - because they're probably decent then. Usually I go straight for the pay games with no in-game payments, because freemiums and those that try to milk you through in-game stores are plain annoying. The only frustrating thing is that Apple's icons are plain fraudulent, there are apps with in-game stores and purchases yet don't carry the "+" sign in the store like the Mighty Eagle in Angry Birds. I don't mind that they do, just be honest about it. Apple should just block any app that doesn't carry that sign from calling any purchasing API at all.

Actually, that's not entirely correct either, as iPhone and iPod Touch apps will run on iPad without a special version. The plus denotes that the developer has bundled the iPhone/iPod Touch and iPad-specific version together. Example: if Angry Birds didn't have a separate iPad app that was customized to the iPad's device metrics and UX but rather bundled in as a single install, you would see the plus icon meaning that you get both the "normal" and the "HD" version. If you only have Angry Birds for iPhone/iP

Bull! PCs are for balancing check books and storing recipes. Buy Pong or head to your local arcade if you want games.

wow! Lol I had forgotten that's what they would advertise home computers for in the 80s. Man that takes me back... and to all of you not over 40, in the early and mid 80s most ads would show the main benefit of a $3,000 (closer to $6k in today's money) home computer is that it can balance the check book or (to get wives interested) store cooking recipes. Wow we have come a long way.

Before you jump down my throat, I know that not ALL poor people smoke or drink. But I think it's fairly safe to assume that taxes on things like alcohol and cigarettes disproportionately affect the poor.

More to the point, app developers pay 30% on their GROSS RECEIPTS. If the US switched to a gross receipts tax rather than an income (personal) or profit (corporate) tax, many of the loopholes and dodges would disappear entirely and a flat rate would likely be in the single-digit percentages.

Well, other than recieving it in the form of "rebates" on incomes taxes they don't even pay. Half of the country. Half.

That's because they don't have any disposable income. Do you know what $40k buys you as a lifestyle in Silicon Valley? A studio in the cheapest apartment complex, healthcare, a car, food, a smidgen of retirement savings and a little emergency fund - and that's it. The people who earn 20K are operating at subsistence level and survive on ramen noodles. These are the people for whom $10 is a week's worth of food.

That's why they don't pay taxes. Because any money they'd pay in taxes would have to go right back

Remember there's also payroll, social security, and Medicare taxes. Not to mention excises taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, etc. You'll pay more than half of these even if you're collecting unemployment.

Not paying any taxes - that's a pretty neat trick for anyone in any tax bracket. Can't believe people still trot out this meme and crying for all "freeloaders" to be beheaded in a public square.

Seems like it would be fairer. Why should the bottom dwellers who are hardly deriving any of the benefit of Apple's distribution network have to pay the same percentage as a wildly successful app that tops all the searches?

Why should the bottom dwellers who are hardly deriving any of the benefit of Apple's distribution network have to pay the same percentage as a wildly successful app that tops all the searches?

Right! Punish the successful people, and reward those who are less creative, less innovative, and who didn't have as compelling an idea and see it through to completion. That is a terrific model, and we should use it nation-wide. You'll definitely get more innovation and creativity and economic activity if you punish it - works every time!

Came to the comments for this story knowing that the topic would be turned into a debate about "income gaps" and "fair share taxes". This is actually a great example of how flat rate pay for use "tax" works. 30% flat tax rate (no deductions, credits, etc...) for EVERYONE though would probably sink the U.S. in less than a year though.
It is not surprising to me at all that their are so many numbnuts on here that think it makes sense to forcibly remove EARNED income from self-made successful people to sub

Nope, that's not why there's is a certain segment of the population that doesn't pay taxes. The reason is that all of society operates better if everyone can fully participate, and that the elite across the world has learned over the last 300 years that you don't want poor people wondering why the hell they have to hand over 30%of their loaf of bread, while the elite merely decides to cut back from 3 summer houses to 2.

income from self-made successful people

Ah, right. I believe that's the protestant fundamentalist in many Americans thinking that

Maybe people think that because the evidence (in the US, at least) shows it to be true. Being wealthy is 90% birthright in the USA (that is nearly all the rich were born that way, social mobility into the upper class is very, very low).

I agree. I think 80% is a low estimate. A lot of games on android are copies of existing games with changed graphics. Some companies churn out the same game several times a day with slightly altered graphics in the hope of catching more revenue. It's awful.

In videogames, developers have long depended on the hits for both profit and paying for the other titles. Each title is a calculated gamble, and if you lose, well, you just move on to the next one.

It's sad for the small developer who puts heart, soul, and savings into a single title, but they should be told that going in, they only have a 1 in 5 chance of just breaking even, let alone squeezing out a profit for all their trouble.

In videogames, developers have long depended on the hits for both profit and paying for the other titles. Each title is a calculated gamble, and if you lose, well, you just move on to the next one.

It's sad for the small developer who puts heart, soul, and savings into a single title, but they should be told that going in, they only have a 1 in 5 chance of just breaking even, let alone squeezing out a profit for all their trouble.

But this is not exactly a random gamble, you know. While you surely need some luck, someone putting his heart and soul and knowledge into an iOS app/game has a much better chance to get some decent earnings out of it than the average clueless programmer. There are lots and lots of apps and games that nobody buys because they very plainly aren't worth a penny. And the apps that sell really well usually deserve it.

As far as software titles go, iOS easily is the most level playing field in existence yet.

Except the App store is the only playing field of iOS and it isn't as level as you seem to think. Apps that get promoted by Apple within the store get a massive increase in sales, often propelling them into the top 10 / top 50. Top 10 / top 50 apps are naturally bought a lot more than others so they tend to stay in the top charts. Apps that don't get promotion by Apple languish in the depths of the App Store.

This wouldn't be such an issue if the App Store was organised better with better categories, or filters instead of having to endlessly hit "show me more" to get another screen of icons with no real info about what the game is. At the moment the order of apps is based on a combination of sales and star rating which wouldn't be so bad if the star ratings weren't so misleading (obligatory xkcd [xkcd.com]).

Although the App Store can certainly be better, its still way more fair than any game distribution platform out there.

Try to sit down over the weekend, make a game, and get it published in the PS3, Wii, or XBox Live online stores. Heck, try to do that with Steam or Impulse. The consoles are goint to ignore you and 99% chances are the PC stores will politely reject you. Steam and Impulse promote almost everything they get but they do so because they also heavily filter what they accept to only things they wo

Problem with most iOS (and Android actually) devs is they make something over the weekend, toss it in the appstore or marketplace and sit back waiting for money to roll in.

I think it is a commonly held misconception that most iOS devs are bedroom hobbiests who throw something together in a couple of days and punt it on to the App store in the hope of making a few quid. Practically all iOS games that anyone has heard of are made by professional development companies with a significant budget.

I don't think the odds are 1 in 5 for individual developers considering how much crap is out there. The odds are dependent on how good they make the game. It's still possible for a good game to be overlooked, but considering how awful most mobile games are, I don't think it's very likely that it would be as long as a little time and effort is spent polishing it.

It is wildly popular - you only have to look at Apple's in-store lists where you can list the top 20 apps by revenue - a year or so after TomTom satnav came out it was holding second place as the highest revenue generator (it sold for £60 initially in the UK store) with the number one being Angry Birds (at £0.59).

I think pretty much everyone buys it, because it is a very fun game that is easy to pick up and put down - it's pretty much the sweet spot for a mobile game. Certainly other games have managed that, but none have been quite as successful as Angry Birds.

Actually there is a load of really good games on iOS much more than on Android, and generally the games are way more polished. The problem simply is that they are drowned in a myriad of shovelware and ripoffs of other games.I have about 40-50 games I consider to be really good on the Ipad, but once I am done with this list the new interesting stuff to be found becomes thin.About 1-2 games per month slighly catch my attention and about 1 every three months I consider worth to be bought.

I rather doubt you find the telltale stuff, or for instance avadon on android. I have both systems and consider the game selection on android less polished, sure you have angry birds and co, but the more interesting stuff from better indy developers cannot be found there. Also i have yet to find a steaming solution as well executed and polished as airvideo.

This is not at all unusual. The best 1% of people at something are enormously better at that something than the average. This applies to virtually everything. The top 1% of NFL players make a large portion of overall money, and the only reason it's not higher is because of salary caps. The top 1% of money-makers in the US earn something like 15% of all the money.

Actually, taking everything does not necessarily mean somebody is enormously better. It can also mean somebody is just a tiny bit better, consistently, in a winner-takes-all situation.

Imagine you hire 20 guys to dig ditches and pay them by the foot. It will be rare for anybody to out-earn anybody else by more than a factor of about two. Now imagine you have a contest to see which of the 20 guys can dig the fastest, and give him all the earnings. That doesn't mean he's suddenly infinitely better than t

The methodology he used (asking people to volunteer to take the survey) means that, as he quite rightly says, the results aren't statistically valid. So they certainly don't prove anything. In particular, broadcasting a survey and asking people to take it doesn't ensure that the people that take the survey are representative of the developer population - they could (for example) be more likely to be non-commercial developers, because the commercial developers might not be allowed by their employers to share

Remember, RIM had 42% of the US smartphone market as late as April 2010, and they out-sold Apple until early 2011 -- they have a massive install base (as large or possibly still larger than Apple). You'd be foolish, as a developer, to ignore the platform right now. There is, apparently, a good bit of money to be made.

Part of the reason for that is that 13% of Blackberry developers would fit inside a medium-sized fright elevator. (I kid, that's a little less 6,000 developers, assuming 1 developer per app. Actual number probably much less, considering successful developers often have several apps.)

Considering that the installed base for iOS is around 250 million users and growing, and the installed base for Blackberry is around 50 million users and rapidly shrinking... it's hardly difficult to see why people are choosing

Disney seem to make good games. Toy Story 2 and 3 were favourites of mine especially. The earlier platform stuff like Lion King, Aladdin and Herculese were also good. They're one of the few companies that actually seems to get it right when doing a movie to game conversion..

Just yesterday I downloaded a Disney game about a showering alligator which is actually pretty educational about hydraulics, obviously a large investment in time and money by Disney and worthy of earning a ton of money.

I LOVE that showering alligator game!!.... er, I mean, my children love that game!... aw crap this is/. we know no one here will ever breed.... yeah, it's me, simple 99 cent game, levels take less than 30 seconds with little thought required. Sometimes I like dumb simple games, and with 3,000+ 5-star reviews I figured what the hell why not? Think the game's called where's my water.

And based on the average pay of a typical game developer (for iOS at least), I'd think twice about investing my time and money in the programming field. Sanitary engineers make more money than programmers, so maybe people should think about engineering instead of wasting their time trying to make money for big corporations. There's no shame in shoveling shit if you can at least get a guaranteed minimum wage from it.

You're clearly not a programmer.

1) Most mobile game developers aren't stupid enough to quit their day job to do it, at least until they hit the big time.

2) These people are the types who enjoy programming for its own sake. Developing games is fun (in fact developing even "boring" productivity apps can be fun, but games are more fun to test:p ). Shovelling shit isn't much fun.

3) Most of these developers are not working for "big corporations", they're self employed.

Well it is also the situation of production value. If you look at the app store, then you have 100 clones of one existing successful program, with myriads of developers trying to cash in on the same concept.Those really getting money are either ones

a) with very high production valueb) with a very good concept and good implementation which has not been cloned to death

Its as easy and as hard as that. I just wonder who is constantly buying all the canabald clones all the zombie shooter clones and hidden object games which come out a dime a dozend every week?Obviously someone must do it otherwise they would not come out anymore.

Yes, and generally the situation is really bad, you really have to look hard to find real gems, like for instance Avadon.Those games make their money, but the possible target audience have a hard time to find them. Instead you constantly either seea) Another hidden object gameb) another physics puzzle variation of the same gamec) another even worse canabalt cloned) another 2d zombie shootere) another bad tower of defense game

That does not mean iOS has not a really good games, but they are drowned in ripoff

Sturgeon's Law at work. 90% of everything is crap. The 10% that isn't crap is where most of the money goes and the few big budget well designed titles are pulling in most of that while the $0.99 apps, even if they sell well probably won't make it into that upper crust. But requiring a lot less developer time a simple yet interesting $0.99 app is probably more profitable.

This same process is at work everywhere. A small percentage of movies take home most of the box office and DVD revenue. A couple of po

Actually the 30% that Apple takes is analogous to the "tax" in your analogy. They take that from everyone and use it to build the infrastructure (Xcode, iOS, AppStore, etc) that allows anyone to succeed. Should we "cut taxes", and let Xcode and iOS stagnate? And then tell developers to stop freeloading and write their own tools and infrastructure? How do you think that would play out?

Nobody ever says anything bad about building up infrastructure. It's when people engage in wealth redistribution that it it s

How would it be reasonable? You would effectively be punishing the success of those who made your app store a success. "Hey, screw you guys. You brought us more revenue than the rest of those schmucks, so we're gonna stick it to you real good."

It would actually be more reasonable to charge less (as a percentage) - a lot of the overhead of providing an app store is fixed cost and doesn't scale with the number of downloads you provide.

It would actually be more reasonable to charge less (as a percentage) - a lot of the overhead of providing an app store is fixed cost and doesn't scale with the number of downloads you provide.

That's how most places do it, the more you make the less the percentage they take is. Like Paypal, once you have over $10,000 a month in sales they lower the percentage they take from each sale. Kind of an incentive to get to that level.

Not really? They're thriving at the rate they're charging now. Having that the "lower bound" of their costs wont push people away unless they get hung up on the figurative value of what they "could" make.

Oh no they don't. I somehow suspect Activision has a few more development resources than some guy in his Mom's basement plinking away on an old Macbook. The great thing was that for a brief moment, just as the App Store think took flight, the guy in the basement had an advantage of faster time to market without the layers of corporate BS. But that window is now closing. Now you need marketing budgets and stuff to break through the noise of a million other apps and the advantage again swings back to the

Ah and here is the problem, we are looking at gross revenue. It is a bad thing that Activision brings in on a game than one guy working out of his home office in his spare time. Sure, sometimes that one guy makes something awesome, but then he ends up being one of the most successful games and that is great for him.

Acitivision on the other hand, might make more money selling those $5-10 games but they spent a lot more developing them and their margins might even be lower than some of the one man operation

In the US, for 2008 (the last year data is available for), the top 1% of earners (those making more than $380K AGI) paid 38% of all income taxes, paying at a rate of 23%. Those in the bottom 50% of earnings (<$33K AGI), paid 2.7% of the total, at a rate of 2.6%. Those in the "UMC," making $67-114K, (between the 10 and 25th percentiles), paid 16% of the total, at a rate of 9%.

In that same chart it shows that the top 10% pay roughly 70% of the taxes. Seems like a lot... until you consider they control 80% of the wealth. The bottom 90% of people control 20% of wealth, and pay 30% of taxes.

Um, no. In America the top 1% pay 38% of all Income Tax and a really huge percentage of all revenue the government takes in from the other taxes that mostly hit the wealthy such as the Alternative Minimum Tax Capital Gains, Estate, etc . The top 50% supply 97% of all personal tax revenue to the Federal Governent. The bottom half pay 3%. Most in the bottom half come out ahead, even factoring in FICA due to the Earned Income Tax Credit and other income redistribution schemes.

So since you didn't know any of this I give you a pass for thinking the rich aren't paying 'their fair share.' But I must ask you, and any other Progs reading, to once and for all go on the record and tell me what you think 'their fair share' should be. Stop the talking points and demagoguery and put a real number on it. What percentage of a persons income, no matter how rich, no matter if earned or trust fund baby, OR total wealth, do you think YOU are entitled to have redistributed away from them. Or even more bluntly, what percentage of a person's labor is their own and to what extent are they your slave?

If you don't like my slavery formulation you are welcome to propose another.. if you can. Yes the State has a legit power to tax but only for the legitimate objects of government, defense, public works and infrastructure, courts, etc.

You have to understand that the attraction of the idea of "income redistribution" is that I should be able to get stuff because I want it.

If there are evil rich people that are oppressing the downtrodden majority, then we should simply rise up and take everything from them. It is simple - if you are rich your fair share is 100%. If you aren't rich, then your fair share is 0%. Of course, the definition of "rich" changes as needs change.

I believe that 'harder' work should always yield better income than less work; I believe that someone making $1.5 million/year should take home more than someone making $0.5 million/year. Nothing too radical there, I believe.

I believe that once you start getting into higher income brackets, it should be exponentially more difficult to take home even more money. Sure, you can make an extra $million/year, and a percentage of it *will* go int

What percentage of a persons income, no matter how rich, no matter if earned or trust fund baby, OR total wealth, do you think YOU are entitled to have redistributed away from them. Or even more bluntly, what percentage of a person's labor is their own and to what extent are they your slave?

If you really want a fair number, I guess it would be appropriate to divvy up a person's wealth between how much of it they earned themselves through hard work and how much of it was earned by leveraging societal constructs, no? Assuming nobody (including society at large) has ownership a patch of a land, or the resources on that land, and I go there and kill an elk with my bare hands, I can argue that nobody else should be able to take any of it from me.

But, that's not really the world we live in, is it? If your business ships products, you use the roads, rail, harbors, or air terminals that we all share. If you became wealthy by hiring good employees who were educated by a public school system, you really benefit from societies' hard work. If you were able to build appropriate plants/office space due to the fact that you live in a stable society, then you are getting rich on the backs of millions of people's hard work. So, I guess if you are wealth because you are a captain of industry, or a banker, or an entertainer, or a politician it wouldn't be out of line to tax you at near 100%, because everything you've earned is predicated on the business environment you are working within.

Put another way, if you removed 1975 Bill Gates from this earth and dropped him onto another habitable planet with no intelligence species but animals similar to those on earth, who will lose out most? I kind of think if he weren't around someone else would have built a comparably successful company (maybe better for all than MS, maybe worse). But Bill G on the other hand would be decimated.

FWIW, I don't really believe in 100% taxation. My gut tells me that somewhere around 50% is where you cross the line from potentially reasonable to exploitation. But, that's informed by my own societal pressures, so there's no really definitive way to say that's right. I guess what you'd like to see is proof about what levels of taxation make society at large wealthier. E.g. if 0% tax produces -1% GDP gains, 5% tax 1% gains, 15% tax 3% gains, 25% tax 4% gains, 35% tax 3% gains, 45% tax 2% gains, etc...then you could just look at that chart and say we should probably pick the 25% rate because that creates the most wealth. I haven't seen research for that though, but would love to if it exists.

Yeah, the government designed it in such a way as to profit from both ends of the stick. On one hand it's profiting from the specific monopolies they create, because they get their money for elections and their jobs once they are done with government there. On the other hand they are using the populist moves that in reality hurt the individuals, especially middle/lower income people, but they gain large constituency this way, because poor people who government gives hand outs to are an easy to get voting bl

I think there's a simple solution. Make the wealthy responsible for employment. If employment goes below certain threshold, you start taxing their wealth progressively to the amount of risk they take.

- so you just want people to hide their money? Henry Ford hired enough workers to keep the assembly lines going, but he definitely could use thousands more people if he did NOT build the assembly lines.

Of-course he was producing the cheapest, highest quality cars in the world, benefiting the market by providing that type of wealth, and cars are wealth.

The point is that in normal free market you don't need any more incentives for rich to want get richer, they already do. Also the poor want to get rich and t

- correct. There is no free market, however there are degrees of freedom to consider and also what needs to be understood is that the market rules never actually stop working.

So even when the market is being manipulated by a third party (government), the rules of market continue working. It's like breathing - you need air and your body tries to inhale, but if there is third party between you and air - water, then you still continue to breath it. So the function of breathing continues to work for some time,

So... in your view successful iOS apps should be taxed and their proceeds spread around to less successful apps... so black people can eat?

I'm not sure what you're trying to say... so I'm guessing. But due understand you're talking nonsense. This thread is about how most iOS apps don't sell and only a handful are successful. That's all it's about. If you want to get get political about it... that's fine... but you'll basically be declaring yourself to be a nutcase.

A brilliant system, all the lower 99%ers will be looking at the top guys, spending money on app developer subscriptions and saying "with enough hard work, I can be just like them!" - which is actually true with software sales, unlike real life, so I guess there's nothing wrong about it apart from the illusion of a more even wealth spread.

That's exactly what the officials at the rat race are trying to get all the contestants to think. What the contestants fail to notice is that if you win the rat race, all you get is to be chief rat for a little while.

For example, if everybody works harder and tries to come up with great apps, then more apps will sell, so Apple's 30% becomes a bigger chunk of change, all without Apple having to lift a finger.